Pop artist Takashi Murakami has been compared to Andy Warhol, but it is less well known that he also shares an artistic approach with the 18th century Japanese artist Soga Shohaku.

The connection becomes clear in the exhibit “Takashi Murakami: Lineage Of Eccentrics,” which exhibits a dozen Murakami works next to 30 Japanese masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Art’s collection. While appearing dissimilar, many works express similar concepts in Japanese art.

“Eccentricity has a long history in Japanese art, and Murakami has revived and carried on the tradition,” said prominent art historian Nobuo Tsuji. “I hope that after seeing this exhibition, people will get a feel for the truly deep connection that exists between the past and the present.”

With its dramatic, colorful wall-size paintings and large multi-panel screens, the exhibit seems to reach out to audiences. In both the 18th century and contemporary works, there are layers of detail, saturated tones and colors, monsters with bulging eyes, scaled and pointed dragon tails, swirling whirlwinds and clouds, flowers against gold backgrounds.

Murakami, born in 1962, is widely recognized for his happy-faced flowers, playful human/animal creatures, and bright colors and flat surfaces. While these reflect the influence of anime, manga and other elements of pop culture, they also express the influence on Murakami of Tsuji’s principles of Japanese art history, which Murakami discovered when he read Tsuji’s book “The Lineage of Eccentrics.”

“I’m always trying to find new audiences of Japanese art,” Morse said. “He is at the cutting edge of what people respond to, but he also is so aware of history.”

In the tradition of Japanese artists, Murakami does not see a distinction between fine and applied art, she said. He also paints scenes that lack depth, compressing many objects onto a flat plane.

Trained as a traditional Japanese painter, Murakami felt it was important to have a voice in contemporary art. When he discovered the Japanese eccentrics written about by Tsuji, he started to look to these artists for inspiration, particularly the 18th century artist Soga Shohaku.

Creating a dramatic exhibit entrance, “Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind” is a new 59-foot-long work by Murakami debuting at the museum. The vibrant, richly colored work with dragons, human figures and swirling winds is inspired by a painted screen by the same name by Shohaku. The museum owns one of the largest collection of Shohaku in the world.

An antecedent of Murakami’s animation can be seen in the remarkable intensely detailed “Night Attack on the Sanjo Palace, from the Illustrated Scrolls of the Events of the Heiji Era.” Nearly 23 feet long, it is considered one of the most powerful battle scenes in Japanese art, according to Morse. The action develops across the scroll in a series of sequential paintings packed with images of the attack from start to finish.

One gallery room is a recreation of an installation Murakami did in Versailles in 2010, with an entire wall covered by the painting “Summer Vacation in the Kingdom of the Golden,” where hundreds of flowers with smiling faces are painted flat on a gold background. On the floor is a mural of similarly painted flowers. On another wall is “Poppies,” a 17th century screen of red and white poppies, also on a gold background, used to convey both depth and surface, Morse said. The painter Tawaraya Sotatsu was considered eccentric because of his bold, decorative design.

“Lots, Lots of Kaikai and Kiki” is a huge wall painting packed with multiple images of his signature rabbit and mouse-ear creatures making faces, set against a background of smiling flowers.

“You can see his signature elements,” Morse said. “There’s a need for play. He said to me, ‘It’s just fun.’”

Humor among the Japanese eccentrics can be seen in the Shohaku scroll “Asahina in a Tug-of-war with a Demon,” where an ogre cheats a strong man out of his win by anchoring himself with a rock tied around his waist.

In the section on religiosity, Murakami expressed his belief that religions must change in order to remain relevant to new generations. He found inspiration in the museum’s 11th century “Shaka, the Historical Buddha,” but he mutated the deity in his “Oval Buddha Silver.” It’s set on a silver elephant and lotus petal base and has a two-sided face, one with fang teeth.

For Museum of Fine Arts director Matthew Teitelbaum, this exhibit is the culmination of the museum’s long association with Murakami and Tsuji. The museum presented the artist’s first solo exhibition at a major American museum in 2001, and its curators have worked extensively with the art history professor to catalogue the museum’s extensive collection of Japanese art.

“Over the course of three decades, Murakami has established himself as one of today’s most daring artists, questioning the boundaries of real and imagined, playful and serious, past and present,” Teitelbaum said. “(This is) a groundbreaking collaboration (with Professor Tsuji and Curator Morse) to celebrate our historic collection and showcase how it can continue to resonate with contemporary artists and audiences today.”